


Contemplating Failure

by madelinescribbles



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Stream of Consciousness, Teen Angst, because she had to deal with allisons death as much as the director, carolina as a teenager, fear of failure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:21:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madelinescribbles/pseuds/madelinescribbles
Summary: A few months after the death of her mother, Carolina meditates on the past and the future.





	Contemplating Failure

**Author's Note:**

> We never hear much about Carolina's reaction to her mother's death. This is my exploration of the character based heavily on my own experience with loss of a parent and prep for military life. Unbeta'd, lightly proofed, raw & real.

She laid on the ground with her knees bent in the air, arms crossed over her chest and gripping her shoulders, abs tense; curl-up ready position. She wasn’t going to do any curl-ups. She stared at the ceiling fan spinning uniformly above her. 

The back of her eyes hurt with a dull stabbing pain. Tears were attempting to push their way through but did not come. She wasn’t sure if she was holding them back or not. If she was, it was not conscious. Part of her actually wanted to cry for once. But she couldn’t. Maybe it was a physical defect. She had a math teacher in 10th grade whose body was medically incapable of producing tears. 

Carolina did not have a physical defect.

She thought about calling someone. Or texting someone. Who? 

Her first thought was Mal. Mal had been her best friend since their families were stationed together on Hypnos when they were 12. They told each other everything, and Mal would know just what to say. Mal had finally hit her father back yesterday and was trying to find a new way to pay for her education now that he was suddenly not. She didn't call Mal.

She thought about Emily. Emily was a friend from high school. Emily’s life was set before her. Her family was paying for her education, she was going somewhere close to home, and was very excited about it. No matter what the situation, Emily always listened attentively and then told her that everything would work out in the end. She didn't call Emily.

Raine, Sarah, Nicole, Katie, and Mackenzie all crossed her mind. She didn't know any of them well enough to call them. They wouldn't understand what she felt and she didn't know how to put her feelings into words. She didn't text them.

For some reason she thought about her old running coach. She was an inner city elementary school teacher during the day and she had helped many kids on the team finish school when their domestic lives were falling apart. She never really took interest in Carolina until she had the chance to help her through tragedy. It felt superficial. She did not text her coach.

She thought about her therapist. A while back Carolina was told she could not go to the sessions anymore or she would be medically unfit for duty. Her therapist was never told why Carolina would not be making any more appointments. Carolina told him that she felt better. He was suspicious, especially because her mother had died less than a month prior. He told Carolina he would talk to her anytime, free of charge. She did not call the therapist.

100 curl-ups in 2 minutes.

Her mind dissected the numbers in the same familiar calculations. 100 curl-ups in 2 minutes. 50 curl-ups per minute. 1.2 seconds for each curl-up. 0.83 curl-ups per second.

She had 3 days to accomplish this or her entire future would be taken from her.

There were other things too. She had 2 minutes for 65 push-ups and 14 minutes for 2 miles. But she had no trouble with these. It was the curl-ups that she couldn't do. The closest she had gotten was 85. 

Her mom wouldn't have let her be this unprepared.

For over a year now, Carolina knew exactly what her future held. She would apply for and undoubtedly receive a full-tuition scholarship from the UNSC to attend her dream university in exchange for 5 years of military service. She would then apply for and undoubtedly be accepted into Project Freelancer.

She knew it, her family knew it, her teachers knew it, the entire school knew it. It was what was going to happen. And she was accepted into the scholarship program like everyone assumed she would be.

Except upon reporting to the university she was required to pass a physical test before her scholarship was activated. And she could not do 100 curl-ups in two minutes. 

She tried to tell her father. 

“You’ll be fine,” he said.

“But if I can’t do it, they won’t activate my scholarship and we can’t afford the tuition,” she argued, “What do I do then?”

“I know you’ll do it,” he said.

She still didn't know what would happen if she failed. The first payment was due the day of the test, so she would not have enough time to get out a loan. She just… wouldn't go to college. And then what? She had never had any other options. She had to go to college. She couldn't return to her hometown because everyone who was so proud of her would know she had failed the plan. Her father would refuse to support a failure. She would have to find some corner of space where no one knew her and get a shitty job and never amount to anything. 

Her entire future depended on a very specific 2 minutes, in which she was expected to do 100 curl-ups. 

She still laid in the ready position. She was still not going to do any curl ups. Her eyes still stung. She still did not cry.

Carolina released her shoulders and ran her hands through her freshly-chopped up-to-code haircut. She had wanted an undercut but chose a more conservative pixie style for the sake of her father. He never said it directly but Carolina knew he hated it.

“It’s going to take some getting used to,” he had said when she came home from the barber. 

Carolina felt indifferent about the haircut.

She thought about her mother. It was 1 A.M. Her father was currently upstairs crying quietly over The Tape. He had yelled at Carolina to stop attempting to comfort him weeks ago. She had a feeling that he was upset that Carolina never cried about her.

That was untrue. She had cried when she watched her mother die in the hospital. And in her car after her first day back at school. And once on a team run near her mother’s childhood home. She had walked all the way back.

That was about it. Her father cried almost every night. Carolina was unsure why she didn’t. She wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or not. She felt like she should. She also felt obligated not to.

Her mother would have made sure she was ready weeks ago. She was the one who made Carolina apply for the scholarships and trained her in the summer. She was the one who told Carolina that this was her only option. This was her dream.

And Carolina was failing her. When she died Carolina went weeks without training and ate pity spaghetti almost exclusively. Her dad did not cook and just about everyone who stopped by for grief support brought Italian. School lunches were a treat only because they were variety.

Seven months later she was paying the price. 

If her mom was still here, she wondered, would Carolina still be fighting the military career so hard? In all honesty she fought her mother more than the plan, but she only fought her mother _because of_ the plan. She tried to remember what her stance on her pre-determined future was eight months ago, when her life was, well, not this. She remembered writing about it for a reflection assignment that she knew her teacher would never read. She talked about how oppressive her mother was. How much she craved freedom.

Things were so much more complicated now. Freedom wasn't an option. She embraced the path her mother carved for her. She was excited and proud to be a future officer in the UNSC… as far as everyone knew. She put on quite a show of mentioning the UNSC every time someone asked about college.

At this point she was more indifferent about the whole situation than adverse to it. Indifferent. Like her haircut. 

Indifferent to the situation didn't mean indifferent to the outcome. She cared about her future. And the idea of failure made her sick. Her eyes burned a little more. They watered now. She still did not cry.

She thought about the trips she took with her mother. Hours alone together in a Pelican on their way to military bases or college interviews. Sometimes they screamed at each other and spent the rest of the trip in tense silence. Other times they discussed philosophies and views of the world. Carolina avoided politics because she knew they would end up fighting. It was safer to discuss economics or literature. 

Or music.

Music was something they had together. Carolina paid a monthly subscription fee to an interplanetary streaming service just so she could pick and choose songs she knew her mother would like. It was a silent understanding, whenever they were in the car or the ship together, that Carolina would play her music. If her mother did not like the song Carolina could easily notice it in her body language and would change it without a word.

“You can tell so much about a person’s character from their taste in music,” her mother said once. “Carolina, you and I have such similar tastes it blows my mind. But your appreciation is so much more sophisticated than mine will ever be.”

The second part of her compliment was meant to be the higher praise, but Carolina took more pride in the first part. Even back then.

There were so many songs she didn't listen to anymore. She cancelled her subscription.

Upstairs she heard the hum of the holoprojector stop with an abrupt click. Her father must have been asleep for at least 15 minutes for the idle mode to activate. He would never turn off The Tape manually.

She sighed, audibly, in the empty house. There was a strange comfort in the solitude. Sure, she was alone before - God knows the house could burn down and her father would be too focused on The Tape to notice - but something about knowing everyone was asleep was more secure.

She crossed her arms back into the prep position. She stared at the ceiling fan spinning uniformly above her. Her eyes throbbed with the pain behind them.

1... 2... 3...

 

_FIN_

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first published fan work on AO3. comments are greatly appreciated <3


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